Taking care of 'business'

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I ordered my infiltrators and picked them up. If you live in a city, you flush and stuff goes through miles of pipes to a wastewater treatment plant somewhere. If you live in the country, it goes through a few feet of pipe into a two chambered tank where bacteria break it down, then it goes out into the soil in your yard. The traditional method is to distribute it through a few hundred feet of perforated pipe in crushed rock lined trenches.
I'm using infiltrators. They have twice the evapotranspiration area, and according to the data you only need half as much field; the county still requires the full distance. The real saving is, no crushed rock required.
I have to dig 325' of trench, 3' deep. Then these things all snap together, get the county inspection, then covered up-- out of sight out of mind.
Byron---you could use these for decor. If you want a certain style, say the set of 'Aliens', you could cover the walls and ceilings with these and put bright lights behind them. Add a fog machine or two and you're done.

Presstitution

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So the Washington Post was caught red handed trying to sell softball interviews to healthcare reform lobbyists (no hard questions) and access to Obama insiders. THose of us with any ability to scrutinize media are not surprised one bit, except in their ineptitude in covering their tracks. If the NY Times caught wind NRA lobbyists bought favorable interviews from national media, there would be hell to pay. My image of the U.S.A. is incompatible with a state controlled media. Whichever side of the aisle you're on, this should bother you a great deal.
Similar is the squashing of EPA documents that don't support the global warming/carbon emmission connection. We are going to further cripple our economy by allowing these lies to change legislation.

Cool new tool

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As of midnight tonight, wehave some cool new tools to enhance prehospital patient care. We can spray drugs up people's noses to stop seizures and certain types of drug overdose; we have a new advanced airway to breathe for people. We have a new drug that keeps people from barfing (yay!!!!! wish I had that before my niece destroyed the back of the Subaru) Best of all though--the EZ-IO!
Sometimes when people are really, really sick and or/dehydrated and/or hypothermic (your basic helicopter patients) their veins have a tendency to hide. We have a ew tricks to coax them out, but sometimes people really, really need an IV and you can't find one.
Now, we have the EZ-IO. There's a flat spot just below your knee towards the inside, covered by very little flesh. We can drill a hole right into your marrow and this hard metal needle gets lodged in your leg. We have to sort of loosen up the marrow by forcing saline in. Then, we can give any of our medications or just a bunch of fluid, right through the IO (intra-osseous) needle. It really doesn't hurt to have your leg drilled into. Forcing fluid into your bone, though, now THAT hurts. So, we can shoot a bunch of lidocaine right into your bone to numb it up from the inside a little.
Being a paramedic is fun!

The project update

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Driveway's done...Except for the curb on the cut edge. After the septic system's in I'll dig down an dpour the curb. It'll give some strength to the edge, and keep the groundsquirrels from digging under the old concrete.
All the concrete chunks that had to go, I'm using for fill. The neighbors next door asked if I'd build them a parking spot off my driveway so they could park at the living level of the house instead of going up a bunch of stairs. (They're almost 80). It took lots of headscratching to figure out the angles. The grading is done, next week I can pour the surface. Then a retaining wall, then the two or three steps down. Mr. Frankie (the neighbor) will have the steel railing installed. There are 2" pipe sections set in the edgees the pipes can slide into.
If the septic system goes in without a problem, the real building can start

Costa Ricardo

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One of the 'perks' of being in AirOps is, we are role players for a leadership training class. We get it all set up in a deep canyon---the students really have no idea what they're in for. It makes for a late night but it's pretty fun watching them deal with us and try to organize some kind of search. Last night a bunch of them were from New York ladder companies---just like 'rescue me'. I don't think some of these guys had ever seen a tree or been alone in an overgrown canyon before. One guy turned white when he saw a big spider. I'd probably be equally uncomfortable running through the Bronx at night, I suppose. That's Bobby dressed as a Sandanista. We were both caught in a landslide.

High risk job; told you so

There are many hazards in our workplace. First off, these copters fall out of the sky at an alarming rate. Rotor strikes can happen. In dry weather, you can take a pretty good shock from the hook. Out of control spins, swinging into cactus, the dreaded poison oak, cold injuries, dehydration... Now, on top of all that, our station has a Chupacabra. Mike was trying to get a picture of him, so I was trying to get a picture of Mike. It's a little blurry but there it is. Not sure where he came from. Maybe another municipal department turned him loose in here.
I checked my life insurance policy. I'm not covered in the event of a copter mishap, but there is no such exclusion for goat suckers. If tomorrow morning they discover the three of us as dry husks lying in our beds, will someone please forward this to Aetna for me?
.........And now this. Captain Stephenson showed up for work today. We gave him the morning briefing, followed by "One more thing. We have a Chupacabra in the station" "Chupacabra my ass! You guys will do anything to get out of...AAAHHHHH!!!!"

Decisions, decisions...

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"We're at the stage that we'd like you to submit your salary needs and other contractual considerations"

Cons--- Leaving my dream job that fits me perfectly. Of course there are good days and bad, but you can't beat the variety and constant challenge.
Uprooting my family. AnnaMarie has never had a sense of 'home' before. Kids are in a school with friends they like and on a good track. I love where we live.
Office job? With flourescent lights, ties, meetings? I WOULD get fat.
I really like the people I work with now and feel I can contribute.
Helicopters are cool.
I'd miss the Frequent travel, usually for extended camping trips.
I wouldn't be able to find a decent pollo asado burrito.

Pros--- Regular work hours.
Completely new set of challenges.
Could probably work more years doing this (wait---that's a 'Con'). Current position causes some wear and tear
NO POISON OAK
Liquidating our SoCal properties, we could buy something awesome there. For cash.

Not that I'm seriously considering this. I don't even know what the competition's like, and if they just needed a certain number of applicants when they first approached. I'd still blog about things that happened at work. "Today, I attended a fabulous powerpoint presentation!!"

How we picked the victim

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"OK, we have one more thing to do. We're going to demonstrate a hoist rescue, but we need a victim. Who volunteers?" (Every hand goes up) "First one to the top of that hill. Go" (Strong work Capt Stephenson)

S-271

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This week has all been about playing catch up after investing a week teaching the S-271 course. It's an introduction to helicopter operations for people on the fire department interested in participating. The last day of class is the field exercise.
After being divided into three Helitack crews, they all had tasks to complete. They set up a good helibase using things from the fuel truck. They set up a landing zone. We did some training stations, then started the drill.
No matter how clear you try to make it, when you're marshalling in the copter DON'T LOOK DOWN. If the machine decides to land too close to you you have seconds to get out of the way, and if you have to wave off the landing, you're going to need to see things. You try to tell them it'll get a little dusty, but do they listen?
Anyway, this marshall looked down. That's 5 demerits.
All in all it was a good course and we got lots of positive feedback. They all got to go for a short flight, and we even hoisted one guy....

Crew Resource Management/ S-271

The powers that be decided it was time to add depth to the staffing in Air Operations. As the only certified ACE (Aviation Centered Education) instructor, I get to lead the S-271 class. S-271 is a week long course that's an introduction to the 'special use' part of the aviation industry. I like teaching. The hard part is, this course will be attended mostly by folks that outrank me. I'll have the active support of AirOps there though so it's all good.
Crew Resource Management, or CRM, is really big now. There were quite a few aviation mishaps that could have been avoided had the pilot not tried to take the entire crisis on himself--elicit input from the crew, keep lines of communication open, that sort of thing. We apply that philosophy here. 'Three to go, One to No'.
The harder part of training is the concept of 'soft skills'. In the public sector, everything must be objective. 'Hard skills' are things you can evaluate and document on skills checklists. 'Soft skills' are one's ability to adapt to dynamic situations, things you haven't seen before. Only real goal is to keep everybody safe. If we identify someone as not safe, and we're not able to train a correction, we have to have the ability to exclude them from flying. Even if they outrank you. Invariably that individual will not be able to see in themselves what the experienced airmen are seeing and will assume it's a personality issue..... We'll take that hit.

56 miles

DONE!